Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The SBA and self-storage

If you are trying to figure out where it says SBA loans are now eligible for self-storage or mini-warehouses, you won’t find it.

Sometimes it is not what SBA says, but what they don’t say.

The old SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) used to include this language

“Mini-warehouses, office suites, shopping centers, flea markets, and mobile home parks, are not eligible unless they provide sufficient services. Sufficient services shall be deemed to exist when more than 50% of the business’s revenue for the prior year is derived from the services provided rather than from rental income.”

With the release of the new SOP on October 1st, 2010, that paragraph was deleted.

The deletion was deliberate and represents a change in thinking by the small business administration.